Toward a Bluer Sky Than I Remember
by slightlysmall
Summary: "The Muggles overcame us by sheer numbers. Well, it was mostly the numbers. Their weapons helped, too. It wasn't difficult for them to confiscate the little sticks that were our only means of fighting back. Wandless wizards are nothing against the power of semi-automatic weapons and grenades." Dystopian setting. Scorrose. Epilogue-compliant.


Set in a canon-compliant, post-epilogue dystopian future. For the Quidditch League Competition. I own nothing recognizable.

* * *

For one hour a day, I'm let out of my holding cell and handcuffed before being herded into a padded room with the other 17-year-olds. We have two things in common: we're magical, and we've lost someone important.

My someone was my brother, Hugo. He was murdered five years ago today, which means I've been missing him with every fiber inside of me for 1,826 days. I keep the tally marks in charcoal on the wall of my cell. Some of us fall apart after the loss. My cousin James did, when his Mum was murdered. Dad did, too. He never should have had to watch his ten-year-old die.

I didn't fall apart, though. Not in the same way as they did. For me and the few others left, like Scorpius Malfoy, loss makes us stronger. And that - our strength - is exactly what the Muggles want.

I spent one year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry before the world ended. The Statute of Secrecy broken, the Muggles overcame us by sheer numbers. Well, it was mostly the numbers. Their weapons helped, too. It wasn't difficult for them to confiscate the little sticks that were our only means of fighting back. Wandless wizards are nothing against the power of semi-automatic weapons and grenades.

The survivors were herded into holding cells into Merlin-knows-which building in Merlin-knows-which city. I see my parents every Thursday, and set the calendar I've scratched into my cell walls across from Days Without Hugo by their presence. It's how I know I'm not missing days in my tally. When I'm with my parents, we eat. We chat. But things aren't like they were before. The guards who surround us as we eat, who study us intently, make me wish we spoke a different language. Muggles make us feel alien enough for being magical, and yet we all speak the same British English.

It makes becoming a traitor much more difficult. But the vague idea of breaking out of their system is the only thing that keeps me going.

There are only about twenty 17-year-olds left. As I'm herded into the padded room today, my eyes are defiant, and I thrash like the animal they think I am. "Be careful with this one, Liam. She's the devil's daughter."

Liam must be the new guard, the one gripping my right arm. "_She's_ the devil's daughter? I thought they all were. Isn't that why we're holding them?"

"Of course. But this one more than most. Look at her hair. Hellfire, and she's got the attitude to match it. Watch her closely. Right now, she's looking like our best bet."

After seven years here, I know better than to talk back. In their presence, I'm some kind of dog or maybe a dragon. Dangerous. Subhuman. But oppression hasn't done anything to my curiosity. I haven't heard the guards speak so openly in front of me. Best bet for what? I'm not sure I want to know. If it's death, that's one thing. I have a feeling it's worse than death.

The guards stand far away from me as one machine herds me through another machine that will undo my handcuffs and provide me with a wand for the day. They won't touch us when we get that close to being able to do magic; it's the one smart thing they do. I learned enough my first year - my only year - at Hogwarts to bring them all down in minutes. But magic against the security in the room is certain death. Living as a prisoner was uncertain death. Between the two of them, I'll take the uncertainty.

A voice booms out over the intercom, same as always. "Your practice commences now. Show us your skill, not in violent combat, but all other forms of magic. You have three hours. Do not dally. Do not show aggression toward the guards or each other. Do not attempt to leave this room."

I think they kidnapped someone like old Ollivander when they made their new wands. Snapping ours had, apparently, been a mistake when this war started. But no one told them that wands and wizards choose each other. That they should be paired for life. Or maybe they did, and decided that was too dangerous. It's a gamble, then, what wand we'll practice with every day. As I move into the center of the room, I test mine. A little too long, but it has the give I like. I conjure a bouquet of flowers, for practice. It's perfect.

_This is my wand_, I think. _It's chosen me_. For the rest of the session, I'm obsessed with finding ways to mark it as mine, and I'm distracted from all the things Mum taught me from a young age about magic. I saw no need to concentrate on banishing pillows. I want this wand. I need this wand. "Malfoy!" I shout across the room.

Scorpius and I were best friends our first year at Hogwarts. Being imprisoned does nothing to change that, except make us less obvious. We aren't supposed to have friends. Friends are the first ones who die when someone causes trouble, and we don't want that. "What do you want, Weasley? I have to prove myself, not you."

"Let's partner. Practice dueling."

"Dueling?" he asks, but gets closer anyway. Our words are monitored. Every single one counts.

"The non-lethal kind. At eighteen, they will consider us adults. And then…"

He doesn't respond. No one has returned to their holding cell after turning eighteen. We don't know what comes after. But Scorpius and I share a birthday. Maybe we'll get to find out together. I try to figure out what day it is, and I nearly faint when I realize it.

Tomorrow. We turn eighteen tomorrow.

I push the thought from my mind, take ten paces backwards, and bow. We've developed a system of speaking, learning spells that begin with every letter of the alphabet, spelling out, slowly, a conversation.

_Tarantellegra. Orchideous. Nox. Impedimenta. Geminio. Herbivicus. Tarantellegra._

Some of the spells do nothing, given the circumstance. The guards just seem to think I'm not very good. Just like they think Scorpius isn't very good as he doesn't stop me. I wait for understanding to dawn on his face, then undo the dancing I've set his legs into.

"Aye, pretty girl! You just gonna make him dance? Access to the devil's own powers and you make him _dance?!_"

"Maybe you were right about her after all, Liam. She ain't the one."

I stop listening to the guard's jesting. Scorpius has just attempted to put out his unilluminated wand. Then he conjures a bouquet of flowers, lets them fall to the ground, then with a swish and a flick, sends them my way.

Now. He wants to go now. My gaze moves sharply between his face, the security cameras, and the guards, who are now beside themselves with laughter at Scorpius's retaliation. My face turned again to Scorpius I nod once, curtly, sharply. Identical, perfectly timed blasting spells leave our wands and hit two of the security cameras.

We have the attention of the other members of our group now. We've never talked to them much, but most of them remember us from school. I wonder what they know, if any of them, like Scorpius and me, have whispered conversations or a secret language they can speculate in. For now, they seem to be on our side. The rest of the security cameras are gone in minutes, and my cousin Albus, who normally sulks in a corner and does nothing, blasts a hole in the wall separating us from the guards.

Another student - I recognize her, but never bothered to learn her name - shatters the wall leading back toward our cells. This is the way they disappear. But Scorpius takes my hand. He hasn't touched me since Hogwarts, and part of the shell I've put on since Hugo died melts at his touch. This isn't the time, though, and we run through the wall toward the guards. Scorpius's wand seems to have chosen him, too. We take them down before they've recovered from the shock enough to fire weapons at us.

White hallways and white staircases that echo too much are all I know next. We go in random directions, whatever we can do to get up. We don't know how far we have to go. "Rose, are you sure this is a good idea?" Scorpius asks, panting, as we round the fifth staircase we've climbed in minutes.

"Absolutely not. But what choice do we have now?"

He stops at the corner on the sixth flight, hands on his knees, listening. "Are they right behind us?"

I listen, too, and hear only the continual thumping of my heart in my chest and Scorpius's heavy breathing. "No. I don't know if they're coming at all." The silence is nearly overwhelming. Even in these hallways it feels like the same prison I've been stuck in. "If they aren't coming to get us, there must be something worse waiting at the surface."

"I don't care," Scorpius says, and pulls me closer. "We're probably going to die today," he adds with little emotion.

"Probably," I agree, surprised to find how little I care. I'm with Scorpius. He means more to me than the shells of my parents, and he means more to me than my dead little brother. At least I will die with him.

"You may as well know that I love you."

I wish there was emotion in his voice. I really do. But even so, I can't put any emotion in my own to respond. "I love you, too."

We kiss, and the passion that escaped our voices is found there instead. I close my eyes and forget about clinically white walls and white uniforms and white staircases. Inside his kiss is a rainbow of colors, colors I only vaguely remember from outside of this institution. Colors too alive to signal our impending death. So maybe, just maybe, it isn't coming.

We keep climbing. Still, no one comes. No one chases us. We hold hands. Soon, above us, we see a light so much brighter than the electricity of our prison that it blinds us and we stumble. But against a wall we find lips and hands find skin beneath shirts - skin that hadn't been touched in years or more.

"Scorpius?"

"Yeah?"

"We were supposed to escape into the world," I mumble. "Not into each other."

"You didn't say what kind of escape you wanted, Rose," he reminds me. "But we can move on."

"When we're safe," I promise. "When we're safe."

We're never safe, even when we reach the top and shatter the glass and push through into streets with daylight that blinds us. The sky is bluer than I can ever remember and colors flood my eyes. Colors I don't remember. Colors so different than skin and eyes and hair and whiteness, which are all I remember.

But the colors I see aren't all happy. Gray rubble and red blood and the yellow wreckage of a car. The greenish tinge to ghost-like faces that pass us, so much more haunting than the actual ghosts I still remember from Hogwarts.

I wonder, as we take it all in, if maybe they weren't keeping us prisoner. If maybe they were keeping us safe from whatever mess these Muggles have gotten into. If maybe they hoped to use our magic. To use us to save themselves from each other.

I wouldn't have helped. I know that much. They kept me captive, killed my brother when he proved to be a Squib. They were merciless and don't deserve my mercy.

"Rose," Scorpius says and reminds me that he is still there beside me.

"We escaped."

"Not really. Not if we wanted safety."

He's right, of course. Our magic wands didn't save us the first time and they won't save us now.

We hear the airplane before it lowers enough to be inside our vision. The weight of the first bomb, dropped miles from us - but not many miles - knocks us over. Scorpius lies on his back, and I'm on top of him, touching, aware of every inch of him despite the horrors around us.

"I'd rather die this way," I whisper against his neck. "With you."

"Me too," he says, and wraps his bloodied arms around me.

I don't experience the bomb that kills us. I am too wrapped up in Scorpius's arms, and his gentle kisses, and the nagging feeling that finally I am safe.


End file.
